So here endeth ye first day at ye new job. It was pretty good — the advice of one person to me that “the first day is always the worst” bodes well for the future because the first day wasn’t actually all that bad. Is it a case of first the worst, second the best, third the royal princess, as we used to chant at school? We shall see…

You will probably all be intrigued to know that I actually succumbed to wrapping a strip of cloth round my neck and tying a knot in it. This is a fairly major miracle for someone like me, whose general sartorial preference tends to lean rather strongly in the direction of the “high comfort, low maintenance” variety of a T-shirt and jeans/shorts/combats and the trademark Vans trainers. To put on a garment such as a tie, whose primary purpose seems to be to undermine the above principles and make you feel like you’re being asphyxiated, is not exactly my idea of a rip-roaringly good time. Having said that, however, it very much puts your mind into a mood for work and makes you feel a lot more business-like, as well as making you look good to the clients, so it has a lot going for it.

So will this new look beat my previous record of a year and a half as my longest lasting New Year’s Resolution, or will geekiness prevail? Well, just in case you thought that ties were a bit low on geek credit, Cambridge physicists Thomas Fink and Yong Mao have determined, using mathematical modelling, that there are no less than eighty-five ways to tie a tie, of which ten are aesthetically pleasing. Which of them are the most comfortable?